The One Where Hinata Saves the Day
by fourthage
Summary: Featuring: Hinata doing actual ninja stuff! With absolutely no tea serving or family angst!


Hinata was in the courtyard of the Hyuuga compound, practicing hand strikes against Neji, when the orders came. Hiashi came out with a scroll in his hand and called for them to stop.

"You're getting better at the left block," Neji said to her as Hiashi approached. "But you still don't protect your right side enough when you go for the stomach." He tapped her arm lightly.

A year ago, the words would have made Hinata shrink into herself. Now she gave Neji a small smile and a nod. "I'll work on it,' she said. Hiashi came up beside her and Hinata turned the smile on her father. He smiled back, but there was a crease between his eyes.

Neji knew the signs as well as she did. "A mission for me?" he asked. He'd made jounin a few weeks before, and was now eligible for the type of mission that would make a clan head worry.

"For you both," Hiashi said. "Neji, you're to report to the Hokage immediately." Neji nodded and disappeared, the dust billowing up into the suddenly empty space. Hiashi looked off into the distance for a moment, then turned to Hinata. "You're wanted in the main briefing room. The rest of your team will meet you there."

Shino and Kiba were already in the room when Hinata arrived. Akamaru, waist-high to Kiba and still growing, pushed his nose under her hand in greeting. She ruffled his neck fur in response before straightening to face the briefing desk. Iruka cleared his throat.

"We've gotten word that a group of Sound ninjas just crossed the border into Konoha land. The scouts that found them barely escaped alive. One of them was from your clan, Hinata. She said something about their chakra made it hard to hurt them. Gai's team has already been dispatched, you're to follow and provide back-up. Bring them in alive if you can, but under no circumstances should they be allowed to report back to Sound." Iruka motioned them closer to the desk and rolled out a map. "This was their location half a day ago. Gai's team is leaving markers to guide you to their new location. This is a high B-ranked mission, so be careful."

Tenten must be setting the marks, Hinata thought. They were so perfectly spaced that she hadn't bothered to use the byakugen yet. Kiba, leading the way with Akamaru, suddenly pulled up short, nostrils flaring. He waited until Hinata and Shino landed on the branch with him before pointing. "There," he said. "There's eleven scents I don't recognize, along with the four from Gai's team." He grinned, "Split up? Me and Akamaru go right, you guys go left?"

A small huff came from behind Shino's high collar, "Is that what you call a plan?" Kiba shrugged.

"They're distracted with Neji and the others," Hinata said. "We can come up behind them on both sides." This time Shino shrugged, so she jumped down, activating her byakugen as she landed on the forest floor.

It always took her a half-second to readjust as the normal colors of the world faded against the flare of chakra. Ahead and to her right, Tenten was a mass of deep blue, spitting bright sparks as she threw her chakra-enhanced weapons. Lee was covering her, a whirl of green that matched his jumpsuit so perfectly that the first time Hinata had looked at him this way she'd done a double-take. She felt Kiba and Akamaru behind her moving to join them, and turned to look for Neji.

He was thirty feet away, the gold of his chakra pulsing in sharp, controlled bursts against the ninjas surrounding him. Hinata got a glimpse of the ugly knot of dull purple on his forehead as he briefly jerked his head her way. She didn't need to see Gai on the ground in front of him to know there was something wrong. He was using the gentle fist, but the other ninjas reacted like the hits were purely physical. Hinata narrowed her eyes. Neji was a genius, but even he couldn't concentrate the byakugen while defending himself and Gai from five attackers. After a brief check assured her Gai was merely unconscious and didn't need immediate retrieval for medical attention, she focused on Neji's opponents.

Their chakra _was _strange. Every time Neji hit one of them, it rippled from the point of impact, but instead of rupturing their organs, the chakra broke around them. Which was impossible. The major organs were source nodes for the body's energy. You couldn't separate one from the other without killing the person.

Out of the corner of her eye, Hinata saw another ninja step from behind a tree, her chakra gathering in her chest in preparation for a fire jutsu. Hinata's muscles tensed automatically, preparing to dodge, but she forced herself not to move.

Focusing the byakugen at the level she was attempting required absolute focus. Her hearing faded as her vision intensified. She concentrated on the ninja closest to her, watching as the faint halo of his chakra sharpened and spun off into thin threads that connected him to the others in his group. She'd never seen anything that delicate before.

To her left, the ninja's chakra brightened as she drew breath, the final step before exhaling a fireball. Hinata's skin tightened in anticipation of the coming heat.

The skill required to manipulate chakra like that meant at least one of her opponents was an upper-level jounin, if not ANBU class. She'd only get one chance to undo whatever was nullifying the gentle fist.

The chakra brightened to a small sun.

_Don't move._

And was eclipsed by a swarm of black.

Hinata felt a distant gratitude for Shino and his bugs, but all of her attention was on those delicate threads. Neji hit one of the ninja directly over the heart, and the threads hummed briefly before the much reduced impact rippled over the rest of the man's chakra. Hinata followed the threads to the other members of the attack squad and saw how most of the energy was dispersed among them. It was clever, and created by someone who knew how the Hyuuga clan's favorite attack worked.

It was also ridiculously easy to beat. Back when they were genin, Team Eight's first mission out of Konoha had been an escort mission to a port city. They made better time than expected, so Kurenai let them have a few hours to go sightseeing. After Akamaru got them kicked out of the fish market for trying to make off with a salmon twice his size, they'd wandered along the piers until they found a group of children shrieking with delight in front of a small puppet theater. The sign in front proclaimed, "The only magic puppets in the world! They move on their own!" They'd arrived right as the hero began fighting the evil goblin lord. Kiba started cheering along with the kids almost immediately, jabbing the air with each swing of the puppet's sword. Afterward, he and Shino got into an argument over whether the puppets had really been magic, an argument Shino settled by sneaking back and borrowing the hero's puppet. Hinata had been just as disappointed as Kiba to see the hair-thin strings. She said as much to Kurenai on the way back to Konoha.

Kurenai had laughed a little, before explaining that the best tricks were the simplest and worked by making the audience want to believe. "Guard against assumptions," she'd said. And, "Any magic trick is just that. Always look for the strings."

So. Unless the byakugen was properly focused, an all but impossible task in the middle of combat, the assumption would be that it was difference in the nature of their chakra that interfered with the gentle fist, rather than a manipulation of it. But now she knew where the strings were.

Shino had worked with Hinata long enough to know when she was about to make a move. His bugs flew in front of her as she drew a kunai and ran toward the enemy, both cover and distraction. She couldn't get to all of them before they recovered, but she didn't need to. Her chakra ran down the edge of the blade as she swept it between the two closest ninja. One of the men jerked, and Neji took the opportunity to hit him again. This time it took, and the man coughed blood before dropping. Hinata slashed through the next ninja's strings, but the third realized what was going on and lashed a kick toward her stomach before she could reach him. She deflected the blow with one hand and twisted to avoid the punch that followed. She used the momentum to sweep the man's legs, and sliced the air above his head with her kunai as he fell. She left him to Neji, and turned to face the remaining two ninja.

Who were on the ground, chakra strings cut. As Neji moved past her toward the ninja she'd just left, she caught a glimpse of hardened chakra around his right hand. Of course, Hinata thought. If anyone was the "but" in all but impossible, it was Neji.

Shino's bugs were settling over the ninja on the ground to drain their energy and keep them quiet for transportation back to Konoha. Hinata let her focus go, and sound slowly returned. Distantly, she heard Lee exhorting the virtues of faithful comrades. Kiba and the others must have finished with their half.

Neji knelt by Gai, a slight crease between his eyes.

"How is he?" Hinata asked.

"It was a poisoned dart. He's still breathing and his chakra is good, so they must have been going for the capture. He should be fine once we get him to a med-nin." Neji deactivated his byakugen and gave her a tired smile, "Thanks."

Later, Hinata was sure, she would feel the bruises from the blocked blows, and the exhaustion from stretching her limits with the byakugen. But right now, all she could think was that for once she'd done the rescuing, that she was one step further along her ninja way.

Her smile back was blinding.


End file.
